WASHINGTON — Moments before the Senate deal was finalized on Wednesday, some House conservatives were alternately defiant and defeated, acknowledging they may have lost the current battle but vowing to fight on.
At a longstanding lunch of House conservatives sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, hard-line Republican lawmakers largely rallied around Speaker John A. Boehner, blaming their more moderate colleagues who they said had not had the backbone to stand strong in the fight to defund or delay President Obama’s signature health care law.
“I’ve actually been really proud of Speaker Boehner the last two and half weeks,” said Representative Raul Labrador, Republican of Idaho, one of a small group of members who earlier this year did not vote to re-elect Mr. Boehner as speaker. “I’m more upset with my Republican conference, to be honest with you. It’s been Republicans here who apparently always want to fight — but they want to fight the next fight — that have given Speaker Boehner the inability to be successful in this fight.”
He added: “So if anybody should be kicked out, it’s probably those Republicans — and not Speaker Boehner — who are unwilling to keep the promises they made to American people.”
Representative Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas, called his colleagues who were eager to accept a Senate compromise the “surrender caucus” who just “whine and whine.”
“It’s pretty hard when he has a circle of 20 people that step up every day and say, ‘Can we surrender today, Mr. Speaker? Can we just go away? Can we make it easy?’” said Mr. Huelskamp, who also did not support Mr. Boehner for speaker earlier this year. “I would say the surrender caucus is the whiner caucus, and all they do is whine about the battle, as if they thought being elected to Washington was going to be an easy job.”
The lawmakers added that Mr. Boehner, of Ohio, had to scrap his last-ditch effort Tuesday to put forth a plan of his own when his conference found itself divided among three conflicting factions: moderate Republicans who were simply eager to reopen the government; those who opposed a provision that would have made members of Congress, White House officials and their staffs ineligible for government contributions to their health insurance on the new exchanges; and conservatives who felt the proposal did not go far enough in dismantling the health care law.
Conservatives in the House also remained skeptical that they would gain the upper hand in the near future. Mr. Labrador said that with the president still unwilling to negotiate in what he said was good faith, he thought it was unlikely that Republicans would extract many concessions in any upcoming conference over the budget between the House and the Senate.
And, said Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky: “I’m going to commit candor here. I think we have less leverage on the next C.R. and on the next debt limit than we did right now,” he said, referring in part to a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution.
But while they blamed their colleagues, as well as Senate Democrats and Mr. Obama, House conservatives also shouldered some of the blame. Representative Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, said that their most compelling message — that the president’s health care law was not ready, and should at least be delayed for individuals — was squandered during their conference’s early push to defund the entire law.
“We didn’t really articulate that well,” he said. “It kind of got lost in the shuffle of the initial defund push.”
So, wondered one reporter at the lunch, would any of the conservatives be supporting the Senate’s plan?
The question prompted audible laughter.
“I don’t even need to see it to know the answer,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina.